Daily Thought

Today’s Thought from Genesis 27-30

 

When you look at the family of Isaac, Rebecca, their children and their spouses you aren’t looking at what we would call the Cleavers or some typical Christian family (or are we),  In these chapters you have a brother betraying a brother, a mother conspiring with a son to deceive the father, sisters despising one anther and an son-in-law deceiving and taking advantage of his father-in-law.  These are just the obvious stories.  If God likes to work with imperfect people and he obviously does, he has really hit the jackpot here. But are these people that different from a lot of the people we normally see at church.  Without even thinking about it, I can imagine that you can identify people you know who are followers that have real family issues, have personal conflict issues, have addictions etc… are they that much different from the story we see here.  But look between the negative stories, God still is using these imperfect people to do some absolutely amazing things, not because they are sinners, but in spite of the fact that they are sinners.  While these characters have huge failures some also have a greater desire to be right with their God.  

How many times do we hear, I have been to bad for God to love me, God could never forgive me, etc…  Those people have not read the story, they may have difficulty forgiving themselves but the problem in those cases isn’t with God.  Likewise how often do we write off good people because of big failures?  If you are reading along in this relationship journey, we have some pretty amazing people doing some pretty horrific deeds.  It doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences for these actions there are and sometimes they are huge, but in time the relationship with God and often the offended one is restored, in the cases of the people we are reading about some of their greatest accomplishments came after their greatest failures.  By all means people must be held accountable, but when God can restore someone from failure and sin and we can’t, the problem is not with God or the one who has offended it is solely with us.  There is an old saying that time heals all wounds, not true.  While healing will take time, it will come because of a change in the heart of those involved not simply the passing of time. Forgiveness requires repentance and repentance requires action, so time alone will not suffice.  As we move through relationship with God, there will be great highs and awesome moments and we are going to struggle.  We will be disappointed when those close to us fail, when they hurt us and/or the ones we love, when their life doesn’t reflect the person they claim to be.  And rightly, for a time there will be separation and possible consequence, but if the offending person is repentant, has sought forgiveness and making an effort to restore right relationships with God and us and we cannot forgive then like before the problem is not with the offender it is with us. 

God works with imperfect people better than anyone, and He is the only one who doesn’t have too.

 

Have a great day

Rob